In “The Spectacle of the Other,” Stuart Hall discusses how representations of non-Western cultures often rely on stereotypes, emphasizing a binary set of “the exotic Other” against the “familiar West.” In Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, this binary becomes vivid in the opening scene, where Lieutenant Pinkerton, a U.S. naval officer, meets Cio Cio San, a young Japanese girl he is set to marry temporarily. The opera uses music, dialogue, and costumes to portray Cio Cio San as submissive, naive, and mystical– all qualities often stereotypically assigned to Asian women in Orientalist frameworks. Her delicate voice, traditional attire, and ritualized movements are all made to appeal to Western ideas of the “exotic”…

In the “Flower Duet” scene where Cio-Cio-San is waiting for her husband to come home and she says “I shall stand there on the brow of the hill and wait, and wait a long time, and I shan’t find the long wait wearisome.” This highlights how naive Cio-Cio-San is because the audience and the other characters know that Pinkerton will not come back but she still has some faith that the marriage she is in will be fruitful. This characterizes Japanese people as people who during this time are unaware of what reality is truly like and people who are over optimistic. This also makes it seem people from the…

Stuart Hall’s essay “The Spectacle of the Other” explains the idea of how people create specific stereotypes through visual representation. Minorities are usually classified as the ‘other’, who are different from the dominant norm in the society.  Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism explains how the “Occident’ (western society) creates stereotypes of the “Orient” (Eastern cultures) to justify their dominance and colonialism. With this idea, the opera Madama Butterfly displays orientalism by having the American naval officer see Cio-Cio San as exotic and merely a tool for his pleasure. The butterfly appears with her family in a traditional Japanese wedding ceremony in the first scene. Pinkerton’s seems casual about the whole thing.…

Stuart Hall’s essay “The Spectacle of the Other” discusses how the media/ art can be often used to reinforce stereotypes of a certain group. This is something that I’ve noticed countless times growing up and watching a lot of shows. For example, I am Indian and have seen Indians being portrayed in Hollywood with strong accents and often having strict parents. For Madama Butterfly, the performance also in some ways reinforced the exoticism of women of color. The main character Cio-Cio-San is a young girl who is East Asian, willing to get married to live a better life. Her character alone already plays into stereotypes surrounding women of color being…